A haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience. A close friend and protégé of Marguerite Duras, Barbara Molinard (1921-1986) wrote and wrote feverishly, but only managed to publish one book in her lifetime: the surreal, nightmarish collection Panics. These thirteen stories beat with a frantic, off-kilter rhythm as Molinard obsesses over sickness, death, and control. A woman becomes transfixed by a boa constrictor at her local zoo, mysterious surgeons dismember their patient, and the author narr... continue